Christiane Schmidtmer

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Christiane Schmidtmer (24 December 1939 – 13 March 2003) was a German actress, model, nude model, and memoirist. She was born in Mannheim to Gertrud and Jakob Schmidtmer. Her father disappeared in Russia during World War II and the family moved to Heidelberg after her mother remarried. At 17 her mother sent her to London to learn English, then she finished school in Heidelberg. In 1959 she moved to Munich to study acting and worked on stage from 1961 to 1963. She then became a model in Germany, posing for fashion and nude magazines and later for Playboy, and she also did advertising work for Max Factor.

In 1964 she was introduced at the New York World's Fair and toured the United States. In 1965 she started a long relationship with Michel Thomas. Her first US film was Ship of Fools (1965); she also appeared in Boeing Boeing (1965). Critics called her one of the first successful German actresses in Hollywood in the 1960s, with the nickname Liebesbombe (Love Bomb). She appeared in many films and TV shows in the 1970s, including The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) and The Big Doll House (1971). Her last film was Hot Bubblegum (1981), part of the Eskimo Limon series.

Schmidtmer also did commercials and voice work, and later worked as a real estate agent in Southern California. In 1980 she published her autobiography My Wild Nights in Hollywood, in which she writes about famous actors she knew, including Glenn Ford. She lived in Munich for a while, then moved back to Germany in 1995. She died in Heidelberg in 2003 at the age of 63 and is buried in Heidelberg-Handschuhsheim.